Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran fatally shot during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building by Lt. Michael Byrd, was denied a military burial earlier this year, according to her mother.
Babbitt, should have been able to be buried with full military honors, her mother, Micki Witthoeft, told Newsmax TV Saturday, because she loved her country enough that she would have died for it.
It’s one thing for political leaders and Americans to talk disparagingly of her daughter, Witthoeft said, but having the Air Force turn away from her just makes it worse.
“I think the military disrespected her,” Witthoeft told John Tabacco on Saturday night’s “Wise Guys.” “We had some proud patriots who did a flag service for her and played taps, and it was a beautiful service, but to be told by the Air Force that she didn’t qualify for participating in Jan. 6, that was a slap in the face.”
“To me, that was just so disrespectful and no reason for it,” she added.
“In my heart, she’s a hero,” Witthoeft told Tabacco. “But I don’t need everyone to see her that way. I just need people to know that she had goodness in her heart and she had patriotic thoughts in her heart and not insurrection.”
Witthoeft rejected the narratives that the protest at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was meant to be anything more than an expression of disapproval in how COVID-19 election changes were abused to tilt the election against former President Donald Trump.
“At this point, I think it should be libelous to push that [insurrection] narrative forward, because nobody’s been charged with insurrection – not one person that was there that day,” Witthoeft noted.
“Some people are still in jail for 10 months for doing nothing more than carrying a flag,” she added in her first televised interview since her daughter was killed.
“She was a brave, quintessential American woman, independent, pragmatic – you know, if there was a problem in front of her she was going to solve it,” Witthoeft said, adding she “answered the call for her country several times,” serving four tours of duty overseas in the Middle East, Newsmax reported.
“She answered President Trump’s call to go and protest the election, and that’s because she felt like that’s where she should be,” Witthoeft said.
“I miss her. This country misses her. She was a true patriot.”
This is an excerpt from Conservative Brief.
